WI the native americans were white?

[Thesaurus Rex]

@Sime they haven't been found with 'european ancestry'. They just have a haplogroup that appears similar to a haplogroup found in Europe. That's it. And the consensus for this pointing to an earlier European contact is phenomenally low.

 

[NothingNow]

@Sime they haven't been found with 'european ancestry'. They just have a haplogroup that appears similar to a haplogroup found in Europe. That's it. And the consensus for this pointing to an earlier European contact is phenomenally low.

Yeah, even then that Haplogroup is also stupidly common in Northern and Central Asia as well, so it's a legacy of the last ice age, where the root population for all of those groups happened to be sitting around in Central Asia.

 

[Tyr]

Anyway, you would come up with something like the bronze-age celtic tribes, which would be even less complex than the european ones, because of isolation and poor choices of domesticated pets and plants.

I have some idea that they would bould cities at some point. Maybe the Solutreans bring some techs from Europe, like seafaring? (Feel free to correct me here, idk much)

Why would the people being a different ethnicity cause them to be more developed than they were iotl?

White is a rather broad term. You can throw in anyone from Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East and be able to classify them as white. What types? What would the texture and color of their hair by, their eye color, shade of skin... Heck, you can still see them being looked down upon much like peasants were in Western Europe for not being like the nobility, who liked their skin to be so pale from lack of contact with the sun that it turned translucent.

Caucasian and white aren't the same thing. Arabs are not white.
I would imagine the people were talking about here will look north European + 10,000 years of separate development. I wonder how much difference this could make. How long would it take for darker skin to re-evolve? Certainly with otl native Americans you had some variety after such short time.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Added with the fact that even you prevent the first wave of Asian migrants to the Americas, you'll still have the second or third waves come and they'll contribute to the European-origin Native American genepool.

 

[mrmandias]

People are extremely sensitive to facial and other physical differences. These whites will look different enough in small ways, both for micro-micro-micro-evolutionary reasons and because of different habits and upbringing, even different speech patterns (they shape facial muscles), that it will be easy to racialize the differences.

 

[Clandango]

Indeed. Just check out pictures of albinos from Africa and albinos form Asia or Europe. Once you get past the unhealthily pale skin, you can see differences of the facial structure.

 

[zoomar]

Early European attitudes about Native Americans had little to do with "race" as we understand it today. It had more to do with the radical disparity in technology and culture between European colonists and people of the New World (at least in what became the USA). There was also the whole biblical issue...were the Natives in the New World descendents of Adam and if not, were they even human beings with souls? If they weren't they could be killed and exploited, if they were they needed to be saved by conversion.

These issues would have been there even if the Native Americans looked exactly like blond, blue-eyed Norwegians. The only way Europeans would have treated Natives differently is if the first colonists were met by people carrying guns, steel swords, and other recognizeable elements of old-world advanced cultures in Europe, the Middle East, and China.

 

[Clandango]

Let us think of this another way. Berbers, Arabs, Turks, Jews (of nearly every subgroup), and such are all classified as white. In the time of Columbus and after they would still not be seen in a positive light. People even questioned if anyone in Poland or the Balkans could be considered European. Being "white" will not be enough to change things. If the Natives had brown hair they might be able to mingle well enough. Red hair, though? Obviously they would be hot blooded or be tied in to the voyages of St. Brendan or be one of the lost Tribes of Israel or something. If the hair is straight, they would be put on par with the Irish, if curly then with Jews (no idea why Medivale Europeans thought Jewish people had lots of red hair). Either way, you would be lower class.

Speaking of class though, think to the Carolinas and how their plantations were staffed by African slaves, Native slaves, and indentured servants from Ireland and England. Having less of a skin difference might make it easier for European men and women to escape and join tribes without having people slaughtering tribes in an effort to rescue them for the (admittedly high) chance that they had been kidnapped. But yah, I see things just moving back into classism where people check skin color to see how much you work outside.

Also, would Eskimos, Inuits, etc in both sides of the Bering Straits be affected?

 

[Tyr]

Let us think of this another way. Berbers, Arabs, Turks, Jews (of nearly every subgroup), and such are all classified as white.

No they're not (except a lot of Jews).

Speaking of class though, think to the Carolinas and how their plantations were staffed by African slaves, Native slaves, and indentured servants from Ireland and England. Having less of a skin difference might make it easier for European men and women to escape and join tribes without having people slaughtering tribes in an effort to rescue them for the (admittedly high) chance that they had been kidnapped. But yah, I see things just moving back into classism where people check skin color to see how much you work outside.

That's where the interesting part gets in. There's more to history than grand sweeping events.

It would be really interesting to see how it impacts scientific racism. White people could not be so easily seen as a superior race with in quite the same way.
It could also make for an intruiging OTL mormon analogue.